Friday, 26 August 2011

Exercise - Higher and Lower Sensitivity 2

Having done the previous exercise I got curious and looked at my small (handbag sized) camera, I discovered that it had an incredibly high ISO range - so decided to experiment. All pictures were taken late evening, one after another, and without changing any settings other than ISO, and the consequent changes on shutter speed. All were handheld.

ISO 100, 1/4 sec.

This is clearly very blurred as I cannot handhold at 1/4 sec.

ISO 400, 1/13 sec.

This is much sharper and shows no noticeable noise.

ISO 800, 1/30 sec.

This is beginning to show noise at 100%, although it is still usable.

ISO 1600, 1/60 sec

This shows marked noise at 100%, although would be usable at lower magnifications and small print sizes.

ISO 3200, 1/125 sec

Marked noise in all parts of the photo, useful as a record only, or when lighting conditions are so poor that there is no alternative.

ISO 64000, 1/200

Here the camera automatically switched from RAW (which I had been previously using ) to taking in jpeg, and also decreased the pixel size, changing from approx. 12 x 9 inches to approx.7 x 5 inches. The effect is that the image shows less noise than the previous image at a lower ISO.

ISO 12800, 1/400 sec.

Noise is starting to return significantly, and the colour is rather odd!

These images were taken on a small camera (Lumix Lx5), with a correspondingly small sensor. I was surprised how high I could push the ISO rating and still get a usable image, although probably not printable at any large size. This could be very useful in situations where I could not use a flash or tripod, but still needed an accurate record, the noise could also be digitally reduced, or might become an interesting part of the image in itself.